Consultation System
The Agenda The Consultation Process is the public name of the system that is intended to replace the democratic process. Importantly, among themselves, elites refer to this as 'The Consensus Process', so you may see it referred to in that way. 'The Consensus process' is a much more accurate description of what is going on. The Corporate sounding jargon goes that 'All stakeholder groups must have a say in the decision making process' It will probably be sold to the general public as an improvement on the democratic process, The usual tactic favored by the elites is to create maximum information confusion by naming and promoting something as the exact opposite of what it really is, a tactic George Orwell first identified. Under a consultation system of government, you will be disenfranchised. Decisions on legislation are made by an unelected bureaucratic elite and their new law is put to the people to comment on, before it is enforced. This process of consulting the people on law, rather than allowing their elected representative to make it, is where the consultation process get its name. The system is used at many levels of government but the key identifying factor is that the people involved are only voicing an opinion and have little to no power over whether their opinion is listened to. Examples In the European Union, the small Commission, unelected by the people, initiates the legislation. The EU Parliament represents the consultation body, where 'stakeholder groups' are represented. The Parliament can suggest changes to the legislation but the process is designed to be fast paced and confusing. No time is given to seriously read and consider the meaning of the text. At the current time, MEPs are usually told which way to vote by their party. Government public consultations When the government is announcing a new policy they often 'open it up to consultation' with members of the public. In theory, here the government collects the views of those concerned and 'takes them on board', actually in this system the reason it is called 'The Consensus Process' becomes much more obvious. Often a public consultation will take place in the local community, those interested in the proposed policy will attend. Supposedly the government is listening to their views, but actually the meeting has a much more insidious goal, to brainwash those taking part into taking the same line as the government. Various techniques are used to achieve this, they have likely been developed by university research to find the most effective system possible. Not all the techniques are known but one example is regression psychology, an environment reminiscent of school will be created, with small groups sat round a table and an authority figure leading you through the discussion, this is meant to invoke obedience and compliance. Another example is guiding people with controlled questions, the techniques used appear to be similar to classic salesman ruses, such as 'do you want to pay by cash or by credit?'. For example, when being asked you opinion on a policy you might be asked "do you think we should go slow, go medium or go fast with the implementation of this policy?" thereby giving you no option to disagree or even better propose alternatives. Do not be fooled, in reality there is no go slow option, the fake debate is entirely contrived to get you to agree. A further example is the controlled outcome of the meeting. One of the key identifying factors of the UN New World Order Consultation System is that those who organise the consultation, agree on the outcomes to be announced at the end, before the meeting takes place. This system appears to be used at all levels, it is one of the reasons we know that the consultation process is also used at all levels. There have been cases where top scientists at UN meetings have publicly stated that the publicly announced conclusions of the meeting they were at were never actually agreed at the meeting. It shows us why the elites themselves refer to the Consultation Process as the Consensus Process, because the real purpose of the meeting is to try an brainwash those in involved into going along with the elites agenda and even if this is unsuccessful, to use their attendance to convince people that they had some input into and support the conclusions of what is announced as the outcome. The most powerful Consultation Process meeting thats currently been identified is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Note how with Global Warming they will often say there is scientific 'consensus', by which they mean the agreements at the IPCC Consensus meeting Proportional Representation In the European Union the voting systems of member states have or are being, replaced with the EU Proportional Representation system, again this is sold to the people as an 'improvement' on their democratic system. In the UK in January 2010, the Government began a debate about transitioning to an Alternative Vote electoral system, which is seen a a step toward a Proportional Representative system for the UK House of Commons. The Government has been considering for years making the House of Lords an elected chamber on a Proportional Representation system. The Significance of PR is that it allows more minority voices to be heard by representing them equally, which the traditional First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system did not. The FPTP system resulted in strong democratic governments of the majority opinion, the PR system will result in no identifiable government at all, simply a chamber of competing opinions. Therefore, it would seem that introducing a PR system will assist in replacing democratic government with a Consultation Process system where the executive will initiate the legislation instead of the elected representatives. federalunion.org.uk - the website of the Rhodes-Milner Roundtable, is pushing for a yes vote in the AV referendum. One of the consequences of AV and also PR is that you no longer really vote for a local MP to represent you, your vote is much for a national or international political party as a whole. "There are some people who want proportional representation and they are using AV as a Trojan horse" - George Osborne link Direct Democracy A Democracy embracing elements of Consultation system is sometimes referred to as 'Direct Democracy' Gerald Celente has pledged his support for Direct Democracy, calling it the great global gamechanger. In OCT 2011; Cameron even refused the UK a referndum on the EU, even after he had promised one. Post-Normal Science by Jerome Ravetz, of Oxford University Part of the historic significance of Climategate is that the scandal was so effectively and quickly exposed. Within a mere two months of the first reports in the mainstream media, the key East Anglia scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were discredited. Even if only a fraction of their scientific claims were eventually refuted, their credibility as trustworthy scientists was lost. To explain how it all happened so quickly and decisively, we have the confluence of two developments, one social and the other technical. For the former, there is a lesson of Post-Normal Science, that we call the Extended Peer Community. In traditional ‘normal’ science, the peer community, performing the functions of quality-assurance and governance, is strictly confined to the researchers who share the paradigm. In the case of ‘professional consultancy’, the clients and/or sponsors also participate in governance. We have argued that in the case of Post-Normal Science, the ‘extended peer community’, including all affected by the policy being implemented, must be fully involved. Its particular contribution will depend on the nature of the core scientific problem, and also on the phase of investigation. Detailed technical work is a task for experts, but quality-control on even that work can be done by those with much broader expertise. And on issues like the definition of the problem itself, the selection of personnel, and crucially the ownership of the results, the extended peer community has full rights of participation. This principle is effectively acknowledged in many jurisdictions, and for many policy-related problems. The theory of Post-Normal Science goes beyond the official consensus in recognising ‘extended facts’, that might be local knowledge and values, as well as unofficially obtained information.Climategate: Plausibility and the blogosphere in the post-normal age. EU Constitution The EU Constitution was implemented according to the consultation system, unlike any previous treaty agreement. Peoples of Europe were allowed a vote to approve the Constitution. This was done because the EU feared it had a democratic deficit and wanted to silence critics calling it undemocratic. Voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the Constitution in 2005. Instead of dropping the Constitution, the EU redrafted it as an amending treaty. The Constitution had included all the previous treaties as well as new EU reforms into one new document that they had hoped to get approval for. When it was rejected they took the new elements and passed them, without a public vote, as an amending treaty. They called this the Treaty of Lisbon. However one country, Ireland, had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, because the Irish Constitution sad a referendum was necessary. Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum in 2008. In response the EU simply demanded another referendum be held in 2009, Jose Barroso made a special visit to Ireland to campaign and propaganda efforts were stepped up. Ireland held a second referendum in 2009 and approved the Lisbon Treaty. This debacle shows how shallow direct democracy is. For centuries direct democracy has been a tool of dictators who wanted to look democratic, if the people voted the wrong way they simply ignore them anyway, its a no lose position for a dictatorship. For example in December 1851 Louis-Napoleon organised a coup in France and installed himself dictator, he then used a referendum of the plebiscite to retrospectively legitimise his dictatorship. Davos Next time I'll bring a translator. On this, my first trip to Davos, my linguistic failings have been horribly exposed. I'm not talking about my inability to muster more than a couple of words of Swiss-German, I'm referring to my lack of fluency in mind-numbing corporate jargon. Take the title of this year's World Economic Forum - "Shared norms for the new reality". Eh? How do you share a norm? Is the new reality different from the old reality? Who decides which reality is really real? Clearly I don't attend enough board meetings. At Davos, every workshop, seminar and dinner discussion seems to end with the moderator listing a number of "takeaways". At first, I half expected a pizza menu to appear on the power point. But alas no. Takeaways seem to be bite-sized conclusions that can be drawn from any given debate and gnawed upon later. BBC referencing what sounds like consultation meetings inside Davos Frankfurt School link Post–World War II notions of a deliberative democracy are often traced to Habermas’ work on the public sphere, which was theorized to be necessary for any form of informed or rational decision making: A majority decision must be derived in such a fashion, and only in such a fashion, that its content can be claimed to be the rationally motivated but fallible result of a discussion concerning the judicious resolution of a problem, a discussion that has come temporarily to a close because coming to a decision could no longer be postponed (Habermas 1992, 450). Habermas (1962) establishes two criteria for a properly functioning public sphere. First, a large number of citizens need to participate in the political processes and critical discourse about particular issues. Second, and more importantly, the quality of this discourse needs to be rational. Given these normative claims, critics have argued, “no plebiscitary democracy ... would qualify for Habermas as having a functioning public sphere” (Schudson 1995, 192). Harvard Kennedy School Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Modern Citizenship or Policy Dead End? Quotes "I have long advocated a much greater degree of citizen involvement in our processes of democratic governance beyond merely casting of ballots. In another words, I am for more, not less, democracy." - Maurice Strong Maurice Strong link References Henry Lamb in 1997 - http://www.freedomadvocates.org/articles/sustainable_development/the_consensus_process_20060603181/ Maurice Strong calls China a Consultation system - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l4eDZJdUPs Category:All